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This paper reviews the emergent literature on ecological modernisation and considers its theoretical utility in terms of assessing environmental employment opportunities in Australia. It explores the potential for ecologically modernist policy to offer a way beyond “jobs versus environment” obstacles to greener employment. The future development of post industrial economies is said by ecological modernists to depend upon an ability to produce high value, high quality products with stringent enforcement standards. In these terms, environmental amenity becomes a superior good, and environmental protection not an economic burden, but an opportunity for enhanced growth and job creation. The employment impact of such claims is examined in the Australian context.

Perhaps the weakest dimension of the ‘triple bottom line’ understanding of sustainable development has been the ‘economic’ dimension. Much of the thinking about the appropriate ‘political economy’ to underpin sustainable development has been either utopian (as in some ‘green’ political views) or ‘business as usual’ approaches. This chapter suggests that ‘ecological modernisation’ is the dominant conceptualisation of ‘sustainable development’ within the United Kingdom and illustrates this by looking at some key ‘sustainable development’ policy documents from the UK Government. Although critical of the reformist ‘policy telos’ of ecological modernisation, supporters of more radical version of sustainable development also need to be aware of the strategic opportunities of this policy discourse. In particular, the chapter suggests that the discourse of ‘economic security’ ought to be used as a way of articulating a radical, robust and principled understanding of sustainable development, which offers a normatively compelling and policy-relevant path to outline a ‘green political economy’ to underpin sustainable development.

China has become a most dominant player in the global economy with immense political repercussions, for instance in Africa. The extremely rapid Chinese economic transformation has been accomplished through strong globalisation with, for example, entrance into the WTO framework. Now it faces the challenges of accepting the other side of the globalisation coin, namely institutional transparency, ecological sustainability and foreign policy integration into the international community. The purpose of this paper is to explore this.

Macro approach using country indicators on economic growth, institutional transparency, rule of law and ecology pressure. It relates these index scores to the overall social transformation of the country.

China has performed well on economic globalisation but lags on political modernisation, i.e. institutional transparency as well as on ecological sustainability for a post‐modern society.

China must address the challenges of the post‐modern society with its call for transparency, sustainability and peaceful accommodation with neighbours.

Modernisation has two sides, not only economic growth. As China is set to become the world leader economically, it will embark upon the post‐modern society, with its demands for peace, rule of law and environmental protection.

The paper puts economic globalisation against political modernisation and ecological globalisation in a clear manner for China.

This paper seeks to situate the green economy (GE) within the broader history of sustainable development (SD), bringing related lessons and insights into its fold.

We critically examine the history of SD, focusing on the relationship between SD outcomes and a variety of theoretical and political influences, such as demodernization theories, ecological modernization, neoliberalism, and state theory. We situate the GE within this broader history and identify emergent pathways to successful GE development.

We suggest that a strong GE discourse, one that prioritizes both people and the environment, provides an opportunity to revitalize the state, combat neoliberal primacy, and drive progressive economic and environmental policy.

A critical examination of SD history can provide important lessons for GE actors seeking progressive social and environmental change.

As social and environmental crises deepen, the need for developing and propagating discourses that engender economic reform and ecological protection becomes ever more evident.

This research uses the social science perspectives of institutions, ecological modernization and social movements to analyze the rationale used by the early-adopting universities of fossil fuel divestment in the USA.

Through analysis of qualitative data from interviews with key actors at the universities that divested their endowments from fossil fuels, the paper examines how institutions navigate competing logics and frame their rationale.

The results show that while many institutions relied on ecological values embedded in their missions to justify their decision to divest, many also continued to embrace an altered version of market logic.

This research is primarily limited by its small population size. If the number of adoptees increases in the future, quantitative analysis should look for statistically robust trends.

The implications of this research are that we can expect more universities to commit to divesting from fossil fuels if their mission statements provide them with cultural material to rationalize the decision, but also expect them to couch the decision in continued goals and concerns for fiduciary responsibility and the subsequent growth of their endowment.

Social actors engaged in the fossil fuel divestment campaign may take this research and conclude that they need to build their arguments around the existing institutional logics and cultural identity.

This paper contributes original primary data documenting how institutional actors confront dominant logics using both a mixture of internal cultural identity and the reframing of the legitimated market logics.

Modern environmental governance, especially in developed nations, increasingly embraces ecological modernisation (EM) as a framework for managing environmental resources. EM proposes a political modernisation programme that brings the four institutions the state, private sector, experts and the environmental movement together in addressing challenging environmental issues. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of the political modernisation programme on citizen engagement. The paper argues that while citizen engagement through the integration of the environmental movement in decision-making processes is promoted, the prominence given to the state, and science and technology results in a number of issues concerning citizen engagement and more deliberative forms of decision making.

The paper inquires into these issues by building up on the prominent literature in the areas of EM, administrative state, technologically oriented decision making and the case study of the Wonthaggi desalination plant.

While citizen engagement through the integration of the environmental movement in decision-making processes is promoted by some EM theorists, other aspects of EM theory give prominence to the state, and science and technology. The paper asserts that citizens’ voices tend to be overwhelmed in governance projects where the main focus is on capitalist values and scientific knowledge and a main role is played by the state and experts.

The paper is an original work done based on the reviews of literature conducted in the relevant areas and research on the Wonthaggi desalination plant to address the question of the realisability of citizen engagement in EM-based environmental governance spaces.

This paper aims to examine which role governments can play in facilitating the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)' environmental capabilities in a global marketplace. It also investigates whether the extent of the impact of government intervention on firm performance varies depending on country-specific policies.

The authors develop a series of hypotheses that are predicated on the ecological modernization theory and the institutional theory. To test those hypotheses, the authors collected cross-national data reflecting both Korean and Chinese SME practices and then used the structural equation model. In addition, the authors utilized cross-validation techniques for methodological rigor.

A series of hypotheses test results revealed that government intervention had a positive impact on the MNF's environmental innovation capabilities and technological innovation capabilities. In addition, the authors discovered that SMEs' reaction to government intervention had a mediating effect between government intervention and the SME's performance. This discovery verifies the ecological modernization and institutional theories.

This is one of the few studies that conducted cross-cultural analyses of two different nations with contrasting government structures (i.e. capitalistic versus socialistic).

This paper presents the theory of the global environmental system to explain the different climate change regimes emerging from advanced industrialized nations. Using data collected regarding the formation of domestic climate change regimes in the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands, the specifics of the theory are outlined. I begin by analyzing the expectations of some of the more prominent sociological theories about the society‐environment relationship in the advanced world finding that they do not explain the disparate responses to the regulation of greenhouse gases in these countries. The theory of the global environmental system is proposed as an alternative to the rather extreme expectations of the sociological literature on society/environment relationships. Through this proposed theory, we can better understand successful cases of global climate change regimes within the context of the interrelations among domestic and international actors.

Whilst there is a growing recognition of environmental degradation, the policies of sustainable development or ecological modernisation offered by national governments and international institutions seem to do little more than “sustain the unsustainable”. By promising to reconcile growth with the environment, they fail to question the economic principle of endless growth that has caused environmental destruction in the first place. In this context, alternatives based on critiques of growth may offer more promising grounds. The aim of this paper is to explore how the degrowth movement that emerged in France over the last decade resonates with, and can contribute to, green politics.

After locating the movement within environmental politics and providing a brief account of its development, the paper focuses on its core theme – escaping from the economy.

Here it is argued that the movement's main emphasis is not merely on calling for less growth, consumption or production, but more fundamentally, in inviting one to shift and re‐politicise the terms in which economic relations and identities are considered. This politicisation of the economy is discussed in terms of the movement's foregrounding of democracy and citizenship, and it is argued that the articulation of these two concepts may offer interesting points of departure for conceptualising and practising alternatives to consumer capitalism.

The final part of the paper explores how the degrowth movement's stance on democracy and citizenship could help address two problematic issues within environmental politics: that of inclusion, and motivation

This chapter aims to analyse the evolution of competing paradigms and theoretical frameworks that have pervaded the debates on the present and future of agricultural and food systems and their associated rural areas. From this global overview, we will extract common features of paradigms that are being reproduced over time as well as highlight the innovations introduced. Particular attention will be paid to discuss the responses and contributions inspired by European Mediterranean-based research, setting up the framework that underlines the subsequent chapters of the volume.